Becoming friends with Dinosaurs: My First Experience Lucid Dreaming.
Every child has that one thing that creeps into their thoughts and haunts them every night. Clowns, Dolls, The monster underneath the bed… For me, it was dinosaurs – specifically, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Looking back on this, I can fully attribute this fear to watching Jurassic Park as a 6-year-old (maybe too much Land Before Time as well). Watching Jurassic Park made me feel like a big kid because it was PG-13. I was obsessed. Obsessed and terrified. To this day it is the only film I can attribute to causing nightmares.
The dream was always the same: I was in my house playing with my brother. My parents were both home and I could audibly hear their voices in the background. The house would begin to rattle, and the thumping sounds of a T-Rex suddenly surrounded the house. I would tell everyone not to move when a giant eye appeared in the window. My house transformed into my dollhouse - there were no walls along the back side. The dinosaur would swipe up my family members into its mouth until I was all alone with my dog Sherman. It always ended with it tossing my dog in the air and eating him. Then making intense eye contact and coming towards me. Wake up! Wake up! I would then wake up to the real world, hop out of bed, run to the fridge in search of a carton of Nesquik, then crawl into my mom's bed.
The dino haunted my sleep anywhere from once a week to every night. I was never afraid that one would crawl out from under my bed, but rather that I would be trapped in the dream where the T-Rex would eat me and I would never wake up.
My mother, who is a psychologist explained to me some simple science behind dreaming. Recognize you are dreaming and tell it to stop. Recognize that dinosaurs are not real. Recognize you have control.
Overcoming the dream didn't happen immediately. It took a few times for 6-year-old me to fully understand what my mother meant by that. I started thinking about dinosaurs a lot. In real life, my brother and I played Jurassic Park in our backyard. One day we were archeologists digging up ancient remains. The next, we were running away and throwing make-believe weapons at the invisible monsters. Then one day, the dream came on and it clicked. I recognized that even though dinosaurs were not real, there was one very clearly in front of me. “You’re not real. you can't hurt me or my family" I told the beast. "Be my friend instead." That's how I became friends with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I hopped on its back and we rode around town. I introduced it to my friends and bade it farewell when I decided it was time to wake up.
I never had that nightmare again. I can’t recall ever seeing a dinosaur in a dream since then. That marked the beginning of my vast exploration of my subconscious and opened my mind to the ability to lucid dream. It's interesting though, no matter how hard I try to conjure dinosaurs in my dreams or try and jump back into that childhood nightmare, I can't.
The biggest takeaway from this experience for me as a child was learning that all fear is controlled from within ourselves. The darkest parts of our mind are not something to be afraid of or to hide from, but rather to walk directly into.
